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November, 2001

This is the time of year is full of entreaties -- both subtle and
straightforward --to take time to list blessings. Family and friends and
freedom and food. Possessions and professions, and pastimes, and past times.
Love and luck. The habit of pausing and listing is as much a part of our
culture as giving gifts the end of December and eating chocolate rabbits in
the spring. And, indeed, there is much to be thankful for. Knowing what that
is, is for me at least, a very different manner.

I've long been fond of the Arthurian tales, of reading different versions
from medieval to pop culture. They are full of classic fodder: good versus
evil, fatal flaws, fate and free will, and the ever popular unrequited love.
It's also a heck of a good story. So I was curious, but not surprised, when
sitting in worship a few years ago a scene from the Disney cartoon version of
the T. H. White telling floated into my awareness. A young Arthur,
metamorphosed into a fish by Merlin, learns some of life's lessons in
preparation for destiny. And a question arose for me around the fish in the
castle moat. Can a fish understand water? Surly most basic element to a fish's
being is water. Yet immersed as it is, how can a fish know water? Perhaps a
glimpse of knowing from a ripple or a current or a flash of understanding from
jumping out of the water after a mosquito, but a fish cannot know the water.

How like a fish I am. I live my day to day life surrounded by the beauty
and grace of the Divine and yet, like a fish in water, it is too immense for
me to know. I know gifts largely for the ways they reflect on others. I know I
am loved but I the ripples and currents of that are largely unseen. Oh, I get
a glimpse of it now and again but I am so immersed in it that I cannot
entirely imagine it.

Being thankful is like that for me too. I certainly have some hint of the
many graces in my life, but I have not an iota of an understanding of the
effects of those things, of the way they ripple and flow and interconnect with
each other. When they are taken from me, I begin to see them in a broader
context though it is always painful.

Life is like a huge mobiles hanging from the ceiling, moving in a breeze,
delicately balanced. When one of the objects is removed the balance is lost
and in the crazy lopsided swinging I suddenly and painfully know what I had.
And so, I am grateful for not knowing the depth or the extent of my blessings.

I often only understand what I have when I no longer have it. Sad and hard
not to know what you've got 'till it's gone. But this I do know. I know
because I've experienced it. Gifts and blessings are abundant. They are
centered in love. And, being centered in love they cannot be really lost. Only
separated for a time.

October, 2001

Balanced with all consuming world events, the
local media has spent the last six week rejoining their annual pinpointing the
precise location of peak foliage--that spot where each leaf is both a
brilliant color and still hanging on the tree, preferably in dappled sunshine.
The roads fill with out-of-state licenses plates driving state and secondary
roads looking for that exact spot, camera ready for the perfect shot of the
perfect scene of the perfect peak. It's a beautiful time of the year. I
understand folks' need to witness and capture it.

It's far from the truth though. There is not a singular spot of perfect
beauty in time or space that, captured on film or in the mind's eye can be
held onto and saved. Part of the autumn's beauty is in the fluidity. It's
organic. It's a process. The color is enhanced by it's ever changing slideto
the inevitable of change that enhances the color.

Watching the season's cycle from my car window and trying to wrap my mind
around my pacifism and world events I was reminded of a quote by A.J. Muste
that moved into t-shirt trite-ism a few years ago: "There is no way to peace.
Peace is the way." It holds a kernel of truth. We need to actively work for
peace. Pacifists imply, in our culture at least, a spot--a passive spot. I
want to remember to live pacifism--to be a peace maker, active, organic,
moving. That is where we will find the grace and beauty of it all. When I
search for peace as a spot, as a kind of garden of Eden, I will not find it.
The world will invade and I will be constantly drawn away from the place. If I
walk the path of peace in my life I come to expect challenges and
opportunities; I learn to find joy in the journey.

One of the most powerful books I've read recently has been God Is A Verb by
a rabbi, David Cooper. In his exportation of the Kabbalah he talks of the
Jewish mystical understanding of God being more process than being, more verb
than noun. I like that, and not only because it resolves all those gender
issues of God. It both resonates and expands my understanding of the Divine in
my life and in the world. How odd that a simple part of speech makes such a
large difference. Friends have always found God's presence in work and in some
ways God is that work itself.

The beauty of the leaves changing is in the changing. Living a peaceful
life is in the living. Experiencing God not as an object but as an organic
embracing growth amplifies my sense of beauty and of peace. It's in the
making, the doing, the loving, the holding and the cherishing. To search it
out as a stagnant point in time is to miss it's mystery and it beauty.